I've talked before about my struggles with memory loss. This frustration with myself came to a head while producing my most recent dance film, but it has long been seeping into every aspect of my creative life and eroding my confidence.
In mid-February, I attended a tap festival. For an extra fee, one could present a piece before the festival faculty for feedback. Terrified but wanting to know where I stood in such a diverse field, I paid the fee and then agonised over which piece to present.
I've choreographed so many pieces, and since my college years, a good many of them have been solo tap dances (because they were easy to film and post on Instagram to show that I really was working on my performance skills -- not that that convinced anybody, apparently). At first my plan was to memorise one of the more recent works, but as the film became a behemoth that demanded every single second of my free time, I decided to fall back onto a much older piece that's been my mental noodling piece since I choreographed it in 2018. This was -- ironically -- mostly because I had it completely memorised and could whip it out at will. My feet ran through it on my work break at least every other day without much thought. I had this piece.
But as the presentation time drew near, the looming dark cloud of dread that I would find a way to forget this piece threatened to eat me alive. I couldn't remember anything else. What made me think I could remember this?
I tried to shove the fear away, knowing that if I focused on a poor outcome, of course I would produce a poor performance. I ran it through mentally a couple times with nary a pause. I knew this piece. I knew this piece.
Thirty seconds into performing it, I completely blanked.
I was in front of Dianne Walker, of all people. I couldn't just stop. So I jumped to the next thing I could remember -- my placeholder set of 32 counts of buck single time steps. And I camped on it for 64 counts -- nearly half the dance. I threw in the few phrases I could remember, but all I could think was I'm presenting my own choreography in front of Dianne Walker and not only am I not doing the choreography, I'm doing beginner time steps of all things. But I smiled and eventually I remembered some other sections and managed to at least sort of land the ending.
Of course, after such a showing, the consensus of the feedback session was, 'it was simplistic.' I was frustrated, don't get me wrong. That choreography was so complicated and so intricate and I hadn't even done half of it. They hadn't even seen what the dance really was. But not one of them said, 'I could tell you forgot.' These were industry professionals, most of whom have been dancing longer than I've been alive. If anybody would have noticed, it was them.
I went back to my seat after the session and told myself, defiantly, 'I can improv. I don't need to fear memory loss anymore. I can busk.'
See, for years (literally years) I've been wanting to busk. It's both extra cash and practice. What's not to love? But the problem was despite my impressive back catalogue of choreographed tap solos, I could not manage to learn even one of them. And I wanted to have a solid forty-five minutes of solo work in my feet before I went out busking, so my dancing would be worth paying for -- even if it was only a handful of coins. But what I learned after that experience was that I could improv an entire piece in front of a crowd -- even a very knowledgeable crowd. I was completely capable of it. Memory loss could not stop me now. So what if I forgot the dance? It completely within my abilities to improv my way through and now I knew that for a FACT.
It was a powerful moment. After three years of being cut down and shrunk to nothing because of my memory loss, I finally -- finally -- had something that the memory loss could not touch. I could still dance whether my stupid memory liked it or not. I had checkmated my memory loss.
